Template:MainLink

Main article: [{{{1}}}]

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When a Wikipedia article is large, it is often rewritten in summary style. This template is used after the heading of the summary, to link to the sub-article that has been (or will be) summarised. This template can also be used in the Category namespace, but the preferred template for categories is {{Cat main}}.

This template can also be used in articles leads when an article is not the "main" article for its subject. When there are multiple articles, distinct enough to warrant separate articles, but not enough to be very separate subjects. One to be the main article describing the topic, and the others avoiding unnecessary duplication of the main article. A good example would be geography articles where two terms have somewhat different meanings or "contexts", but refer to roughly the same geographic area, e.g. Balkans and Southeast Europe. The Balkans article is the main article, the Southeast Europe article doesn't try to be a duplicate of the Balkans article by having much info on History, natural resources, etc, it leaves that to the Balkans article. This can be thought of as a halfway point between having fully separate articles, and heaving a redirect.

This template is not to be used as a substitute for inline links or as a "see also". Its usage should be restricted to the purposes described hereinbefore.

This template is for use on externally embedded wiki pages, such as a Wordpress embedded Wiki page, that you would like to link to other Wordpress pages that have other embedded wiki pages on it. This template does not replace the Main Article template but complements it for specific use cases.

Usage

{{MainLink
|External_Link Name 
}}

Examples

Code	Result
{{MainLink|http://www.wiki.ubc.ca/ UBC Wiki}}	Main article: UBC Wiki